Just like individual people, all relationships have life cycles. My youngest daughter has graduated from college (for which I have invested a couple of small fortunes) and spent time working on her master’s degree. Having had enough fun for the moment, she returned home with all her earthly possessions before the next milestone took place – moving out on her own into her own condominium, which she is paying for with her own money earned at her own job in her own city in northern Virginia. With all the delight, joy and pride she has brought me, it’s time for her to make her own mark, to take her own place, to make her own way in the world, God willing always remembering who and whose she is.

Milestones, markers, cycles, commencements are endemic to all of our lives. As we get older, they seem to come less frequently, though with no less impact or portent. All too quickly, our children experience many of them – first words, first steps, first Christmas, first tooth, learning to ride a bicycle, going to preschool, first day of kindergarten, finishing the elementary grades, graduating from middle school. If we are not careful, many of these will fly by without due notice given the hustle and bustle of daily living.

Here at Trinity Episcopal School, we are very aware of and take delight in the markers that frame our students’ lives. In addition to joining our students in celebrating the many “firsts” in their lives, we become mentors and guides to them to help them reach the next milestone, whatever that might be. For some that may mean working on phonemic awareness or the difference between a participle and a gerund, for others it may mean wrestling with multiplication tables or linear equations, for still others it may involve becoming more confident in themselves and the talents and gifts with which they have been born, but have yet to break forth. For all of our students it means cultivating right and reasoned thinking based on strong academics, learning to take responsibility for their own actions and to work for the common good, developing a sense of community, a reverence for life, a respect for root values and an appreciation for beauty, and realizing the privileges and obligations of being citizens of the Queen City and of the Kingdom.

-The Rev. Dr. Louis “Smokey” Oats
Head of the School